England
18th century
Cowrie shell with silver mounts
Length 1 7/8 inches
English trade
A cowrie shell mounted in silver and hinged along one side so that it opens into two halves, the outer face set with a domed silver medallion within a strapwork frame that runs across the natural spotted surface of the shell. The reverse is a silver plate chased in relief with scrolling foliage and a bird among the tendrils, and the interior of both halves is left plain, without the rasp or grater plate that a nutmeg box of this form would carry.
Shell snuff boxes were made in Britain from the later seventeenth century onward, when snuff taking spread through the merchant and gentry classes and the trade in exotic naturalia supplied cowries, nautilus, and coconut to silversmiths who mounted them for the table and the pocket. The cowrie was valued for the polish and mottling of its natural surface, which the mounts frame rather than conceal, and boxes of this kind sit at the meeting point of the cabinet of curiosities and everyday personal luxury.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
England
18th century
Cowrie shell with silver mounts
Length 1 7/8 inches
English trade
A cowrie shell mounted in silver and hinged along one side so that it opens into two halves, the outer face set with a domed silver medallion within a strapwork frame that runs across the natural spotted surface of the shell. The reverse is a silver plate chased in relief with scrolling foliage and a bird among the tendrils, and the interior of both halves is left plain, without the rasp or grater plate that a nutmeg box of this form would carry.
Shell snuff boxes were made in Britain from the later seventeenth century onward, when snuff taking spread through the merchant and gentry classes and the trade in exotic naturalia supplied cowries, nautilus, and coconut to silversmiths who mounted them for the table and the pocket. The cowrie was valued for the polish and mottling of its natural surface, which the mounts frame rather than conceal, and boxes of this kind sit at the meeting point of the cabinet of curiosities and everyday personal luxury.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
